Inconestable
by Canadaphile
Summary: Alex sees a stranger with his face and name. Who could they be? And what do they want with Alex Rider?
1. Prologue

TOP SECRET

Name: Alexandria Rae Ryder

Gender: female

Status: special operative

Age: 14

Height: 5" 8'

Weight: n/a

Hair: blonde

Eyes: hazel/brown

Distinguishing features: two beauty marks on left cheek; black-painted toenails

Danger level: high

Mission: eliminate


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

One thing that most people in the world don't realize is how similar everyone really is. For every girl's name, seemingly unique, there is another girl with the same exact name somewhere across the globe. Same could be said for boy's names.

Even a boy and a girl with matching names aren't very uncommon anymore. But when one is mistaken for the other, is extremely rare.

Alex Rider, teenage spy for England's MI6, sat on a park bench beneath an oak tree. The leaves were turning and falling to the ground, preparing for the coming winter. He watched the people in the park stroll past him.

They were so lucky. Alex didn't seem to have his own life anymore. Everything he'd been told, the way he grew up, was full of secrecy and lies. His own father was a spy; Alex's uncle Ian Rider was a spy as well.

But had anyone told him? Had anyone told him his father had been killed, not in a plane crash, but by enemy agents? No one told him anything.

His whole life hadn't been so bad, though. Up until the fateful day of his uncle's murder, Alex had lived a normal life. At least, as normal as possible for an orphan living with an uncle and their housekeeper, an American.

Alex loved sports. He was on the soccer team and played well. His grades at Brookland were exceptional, and he had a knowledge of deep-sea diving, karate, and rock climbing that would make a professional turn red in the face.

But his life had been blown apart by one man.

One man whose life was a secret itself.

Alan Blunt.

Alex remembered clearly in his mind earlier in the year when he caught his first glimpse of the head of operations at MI6: gray lips, gray hair, gray face, gray everything. Even his bodyguards were bland.

But his mind was not. He had one objective in mind, and that was to protect England at any means necessary, even sending a child in to do his work for him.

So Alex had been summoned, recorded, analyzed, and stamped AGENT within the time span of only a few hours. He had been instructed in a week-long crash course with the SAS that normally took ten weeks, and then he was briefed for his first mission: Herod Sayle.

That built up to confronting Dr. Hugo Grief, General Alexei Sarov, Damion Cray, and Julia Rothman, a branch of SCORPIA.

After each mission he'd been sent home cut and bruised to the welcoming arms of Jack Starbright. He would never be the same boy again. He knew too much.

A group of teenagers jogged past Alex, giving a brief glance and a girl grinned at him. Alex wished he could be one of those kids. Living the carefree life with friends to go the movies with or copy homework from; who had loving parents to set rules for curfew and academics.

An elderly couple looked at the bench, and Alex stood and motioned for them to take his place. They smiled gratefully at him and lowered their arthritis limped bodies onto the wooden-slat bench.

Alex had never known his grandparents. Or his own parents. After Ian died, no one wanted him, and Jack couldn't have kept him without steady income and a valid visa.

Everything worked out, though, in a strange way. Alex lived with Jack and occasionally worked for MI6.

Nothing had happened recently that called for Alex's attention, though. Nothing in the world, anyway.

A girl, blonde and graceful, was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the pond where the swans swam. She had a bag of popcorn open beside her and a sketchbook on her lap. As she drew, she threw some pieces of popcorn to the swans and geese that swam towards her.

Curious, Alex silently walked up behind the girl and looked at her drawing. A small, involuntary gasp escaped him. The drawing was done entirely in pencils of black and red. She had drawn the park: the swan-filled pond and occasional passer-by, but with a sickening twist.

The people were all skeletons. Blood-stained eye sockets and hearts were the only color. The swans were black and grotesque, their wings spread into sharp claws that speared the fear flesh covered people, and the pond was blood red.

The girl spun around and looked at him with large, startled eyes. Alex saw his reflection in the deep brown eyes and gasped again. The girl, who had grabbed her bag and books and was quickly running away from him, looked very familiar.

The reality came to him as Alex ran after her: She looked exactly like him. She had the same hazel-brown eyes and dirty blonde hair that fell over their eyes. She was even near his height: 6"0. Alex kept a careful eye on her rapidly retreating figure. _She even runs like me_. _Who could she be?_

Just ahead of them, Alex saw the traffic light turn green and traffic begin to creep forward. The girl would have to be insane to try and cross the street now. Alex ran harder and just as he could've touched her, she ran into the street.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Screeching tires and screams from the startled people filled Alex's ears. She had been hit by a cab. Or rather, the cab had been hit by her.

Just as her body would've been crumpled by the braking cab, she had jumped and rolled over the hood, dropping her things in the process. But she was safe.

She ran out of the street and disappeared into an alley. Alex wanted to follow her, but he knew it was hopeless. She was long gone.

But her bag was not. As the light turned red, and people began shuffling across the street, Alex picked up the girl's colorful bag carefully. The strap had broken after getting caught on the driver's side mirror when the girl had rolled off the car and was hanging limply.

The contents of the bag were kind of surprising at least for Alex. Her sketch book was missing, she had hung onto that, but Alex found a Swiss army knife, some batteries and pens of various sizes and colors, a hammer, screwdriver and wrench, and, in a side pocket, metal wire and a nail.

Everything needed to repair a front door or broken gate.

Or materials required to make a battery bomb.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Alex stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom. It was past eleven in the evening, but Alex couldn't sleep. The girl's face stayed if front of his eyes.

Frightened.

Beautiful.

Yes, Alex couldn't deny that she was a very pretty girl. He saw her graceful figure running from him, the muscles glistening as they pumped in her long legs.

Alex sighed and turned onto his side. He had to sleep. Tomorrow was exams at school. No matter how hard or how long he studied, Alex still blanked out from the pressure the teachers forced on the students. They walked around the classroom like vultures; their eyes missed nothing-no dropped pencil, no folded paper beneath one's shoe.

Tomorrow, after exams, Alex would find out who she is and why she looks so like him. The only possibly Alex could conjure up was to wild to imagine.

His father was a faithful man. He had been a spy for England's MI6 until his death on a airplane. His wife died with him. But baby Alex was safe from the accident as he was sick with an earache and couldn't travel.

Ian Rider had raised Alex since then. Ian had been Alex's father for his fourteen years of life. Ian had taught him to walk, run, write, read, scuba dive, and rock climb. Alex hadn't known that Ian was training him.

Testing him.

Testing his strength and mind at usually dangerous sports. Testing his potential at becoming an agent for England. Like his father. Like Ian.

Ian had died in a car accident. Collision, the police had informed him, but Alex found the truth soon after the funeral. Dead men tell no tales.

But bullet holes do.

The funeral was where Alex caught his first glance at Alan Blunt, head of MI6. One of his bodyguards had accidentally let his jacket fall open, revealing the glittering butt end of a gun.

Alex had wondered then why a man at a funeral would have a gun, but he found out soon enough. He and Jack Starbright, Alex's friend and guardian, had returned to Ian's apartment to find a moving van and Ian's office cleared of everything. Alex had never been inside before that day.

A man named Crawley had introduced Alex to his first test. Curiosity had overcome him, and Alex leaped out of a 15th story window onto a flagpole and back into his uncle's office's window. All of his actions were watched by a closed-circuit camera and two other people, Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones, head of Special Operations.

He didn't even know what hit him, literally, until he woke up at MI6's country training facility. He was told that if he didn't join them, Jack would be sent back to the US and he would be sent to a orphanage until he came of age to look after himself.

Blackmail. Manipulation.

MI6's most prized tools. They got Alex to risk his life seven times for them. None of them carried happy memories. Alex was told his father was an assassin working for SCORPIA, who then recruited Alex. He was cloned. He had nearly been adopted by a mad Russian general.

He met Sabina. Sabina Pleasure. She had been a ball girl at the Wimbledon tennis tournaments the same time as Alex. They developed a close relationship. He was invited to stay with her family in France, where Sabina's father was almost killed by a bomb.

She had been kidnapped by a singer, Damion Cray. Because of him, the US President lost Air Force 1, his private jet. Sabina had to move to the States, and they both knew that they would never see each other again.

Alex sighed and turned onto his stomach. Why did he have to think of her? It seemed Alex had bad luck with girls, particularly pretty girls. Truth was, Alex never noticed the looks he received from the girls he passed at Brookland. He never cared.

He covered his head with a pillow and fell asleep, dreaming of his times with Sabina Pleasure.


End file.
